Michaelis had seized upon Clifford as the central figure for a play; already he had sketched in the plot, and written the first act. For Michaelis was even better than Clifford at making a display of nothingness. It was the last bit of passion left in these men: the passion for making a display. Sexually they were passionless, even dead. And now it was not money that Michaelis was after. Clifford had never been primarily out for money, though he made it where he could, for money is the seal and stamp of success. And success was what they wanted. They wanted, both of them, to make a real display…a man’s own very display of himself that should capture for a time the vast populace.
It was strange…the prostitution to the bitch-goddess. To Connie, since she was really outside of it, and since she had grown numb to the thrill of it, it was again nothingness. Even the prostitution to the bitch-goddess was nothingness, though the men prostituted themselves innumerable times. Nothingness even that.
Michaelis wrote to Clifford about the play. Of course she knew about it long ago. And Clifford was again thrilled. He was going to be displayed again this time, somebody was going to display him, and to advantage. He invited Michaelis down to Wragby with Act I.
Michaelis came: in summer, in a pale-coloured suit and white suede gloves, with mauve orchids for Connie, very lovely, and Act I was a great success. Even Connie was thrilled…thrilled to what bit of marrow she had left. And Michaelis, thrilled by his power to thrill, was really wonderful…and quite beautiful, in Connie’s eyes. She saw in him that ancient motionlessness of a race that can’t be disillusioned any more, an extreme, perhaps, of impurity that is pure. On the far side of his supreme prostitution to the bitch-goddess he seemed pure, pure as an African ivory mask that dreams impurity into purity, in its ivory curves and planes.
His moment of sheer thrill with the two Chatterleys, when he simply carried Connie and Clifford away, was one of the supreme moments of Michaelis’ life. He had succeeded: he had carried them away. Even Clifford was temporarily in love with him…if that is the way one can put it.
So next morning Mick was more uneasy than ever; restless, devoured, with his hands restless in his trousers pockets. Connie had not visited him in the night…and he had not known where to find her. Coquetry!… at his moment of triumph.
He went up to her sitting-room in the morning. She knew he would come. And his restlessness was evident. He asked her about his play…did she think it good? He had to hear it praised: that affected him with the last thin thrill of passion beyond any sexual orgasm. And she praised it rapturously. Yet all the while, at the bottom of her soul, she knew it was nothing.
“Look here!” he said suddenly at last. “Why don’t you and I make a clean thing of it? Why don’t we marry?”
“But I am married,” she said, amazed, and yet feeling nothing.
“Oh that!… he’ll divorce you all right…Why don’t you and I marry? I want to marry. I know it would be the best thing for me…marry and lead a regular life. I lead the deuce of a life, simply tearing myself to pieces. Look here, you and I, we’re made for one another…hand and glove. Why don’t we marry? Do you see any reason why we shouldn’t?”
Connie looked at him amazed: and yet she felt nothing. These men, they were all alike, they left everything out. They just went off from the top of their heads as if they were squibs, and expected you to be carried heavenwards along with their own thin sticks.
“But I am married already,” she said. “I can’t leave Clifford, you know.”
“Why not? but why not?” he cried. “He’ll hardly know you’ve gone, after six months. He doesn’t know that anybody exists, except himself. Why the man has no use for you at all, as far as I can see; he’s entirely wrapped up in himself.”
Connie felt there was truth in this. But she also felt that Mick was hardly making a display of selflessness.
“Aren’t all men wrapped up in themselves?” she asked.
“Oh, more or less, I allow. A man’s got to be, to get through. But that’s not the point. The point is, what sort of a time can a man give a woman? Can he give her a damn good time, or can’t he? If he can’t he’s no right to the woman…” He paused and gazed at her with his full, hazel eyes, almost hypnotic. “Now I consider,” he added, “I can give a woman the darndest good time she can ask for. I think I can guarantee myself.”
“And what sort of a good time?” asked Connie, gazing on him still with a sort of amazement, that looked like thrill; and underneath feeling nothing at all.
“Every sort of a good time, damn it, every sort! Dress, jewels up to a point, any nightclub you like, know anybody you want to know, live the pace…travel and be somebody wherever you go…Darn it, every sort of good time.”
He spoke it almost in a brilliancy of triumph, and Connie looked at him as if dazzled, and really feeling nothing at all. Hardly even the surface of her mind was tickled at the glowing prospects he offered her. Hardly even her most outside self responded, that at any other time would have been thrilled. She just got no feeling from it, she couldn’t “go off”. She just sat and stared and looked dazzled, and felt nothing, only somewhere she smelt the extraordinarily unpleasant smell of the bitch-goddess.
Mick sat on tenterhooks[34], leaning forward in his chair, glaring at her almost hysterically: and whether he was more anxious out of vanity for her to say, “Yes!” or whether he was more panic-stricken for fear she should say, “Yes!” – who can tell?
“I should have to think about it,” she said. “I couldn’t say now. It may seem to you Clifford doesn’t count, but he does. When you think how disabled he is…”
“Oh damn it all! If a fellow’s going to trade on his disabilities, I might begin to say how lonely I am, and always have been, and all the rest of the my-eye-Betty-Martin[35] sob-stuff! Damn it all, if a fellow’s got nothing but disabilities to recommend him…”
He turned aside, working his hands furiously in his trousers pockets. That evening he said to her:
“You’re coming round to my room tonight, aren’t you? I don’t darn know where your room is.”
“All right!” she said.
He was a more excited lover that night, with his strange, small boy’s frail nakedness. Connie found it impossible to come to her crisis before he had really finished his. And he roused a certain craving passion in her, with his little boy’s nakedness and softness; she had to go on after he had finished, in the wild tumult and heaving of her loins, while he heroically kept himself up, and present in her, with all his will and self-offering, till she brought about her own crisis, with weird little cries.
When at last he drew away from her, he said, in a bitter, almost sneering little voice:
“You couldn’t go off at the same time as a man, could you? You’d have to bring yourself off! You’d have to run the show!”
This little speech, at the moment, was one of the shocks of her life. Because that passive sort of giving himself was so obviously his only real mode of intercourse.
“What do you mean?” she said.
“You know what I mean. You keep on for hours after I’ve gone off…and I have to hang on with my teeth till you bring yourself off by your own exertions.”
She was stunned by this unexpected piece of brutality, at the moment when she was glowing with a sort of pleasure beyond words, and a sort of love for him. Because, after all, like so many modern men, he was finished almost before he had begun. And that forced the woman to be active.
35